


Oh My God They Were Lesbian Soulmates

by Crait



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/F, Gender or Sex Swap, Pining, Repression, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21902731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crait/pseuds/Crait
Summary: Insomnia is the least of Tony's problems.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47
Collections: You Gave Me A Stocking 2019





	Oh My God They Were Lesbian Soulmates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/gifts).



> This ended up so maudlin! Please feel free to imagine Mackenzie Davis circa Terminator: Dark Fate as Stevie Rogers, I know I did.

You weren't supposed to tell people: not when it was like this, not when the truth was this barbed ugly thing that was better kept close where it pierced only you. Tony cradled that truth, protective of it even as it bored into her. She didn't have to work at it; enduring came to her naturally. And it was rare enough that nobody would suspect—

"Can't sleep?"

Tony startles and dumps coffee all over the back of her hand. Stevie's reaction is immediate: she lunges forward, flips on the lights and then the faucet with one hand, grabs Tony by the wrist and shoves her hand under the water with the other. "Are you okay?" she demands. That's Cap all over. She's a firebrand. She could be Tony's firebrand.

"I'm fine," Tony says. "Whoa, calm down, I've done worse to myself in the shop." But she can't stop Stevie from turning her hand over, a frown settling on her brow as she examines the skin for damage, and Tony's fondness cuts through both her alarm and her self-pity. "What's the prognosis, Cap?"

"You'll live," Stevie says dryly, and she returns Tony's hand to her with the sort of tenderness that could undo someone who holds their secrets less dear. Those clear blue eyes of hers flick up to meet Tony's, and she says, with the genuine sincerity only Captain America can pull off, "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Tony says. She has to reach out and untangle Stevie's fingers from her wrist and turn off the faucet herself. That sort of touch, the sparks it inspires, is more than she deserves. "Shouldn't have been standing here with the lights off anyway."

"I'm not sure why you were," Stevie says. 

"I can see in the dark now." Tony keeps it as light as she can, tries not to give in to the pride at having reengineered her eyes. Stevie's squeamish about eyeballs. 

"Ah." There's a world of meaning packed in there, but maybe Stevie's as determined to keep the peace as Tony. "Well, I didn't mean to startle you."

"What _are_ you doing up?"

"Same as you," Stevie says. "Couldn't sleep. Say, pass me the—" Tony tosses her a dishcloth. "Thanks." 

"No problem," Tony says. Cap starts wiping the counter down; the coffee mug is chipped, and she dumps it out and tosses both the mug and the chip in the trash. That's Stevie all over, always cleaning up the messes other people make. There's an equivalency there that Tony doesn't care to excavate. "Gonna make it up to me?"

"Sure am." Stevie pulls out another mug and then, with an overtly self-satisfied expression, a box of herbal tea.

Tony huffs. "Really?" 

"Really," Stevie says. God help anyone who tried to move her. She's winning the war on caffeine, and Tony's been reduced to a bystander. Maybe the war's really being waged on insomnia; Rhodey harps about Tony's sleep hygiene, but Tony hadn't thought Stevie noticed enough about Tony's habits to realize the frequency of the problem.

God, she thinks again. Her hand strays to her side, to the mark snugged up against her ribs on the left. She keeps it covered with a digital bandage as a safeguard, but it isn't easily visible—not like Stevie's matching mark, which edges out from beneath her tank top to feather across her shoulderblade. Tony had always thought of her mark as a rotten, sucking blemish, but on Stevie she first notices the spray of silver stars so brilliant no ink could imitate it and then the unmistakable blue pearl that sits just on the edge of the void. Three colors, no red: Tony's very own black spot. She's protective of hers nonetheless, was protective of it even before they pulled Stevie out of the ice. Sometimes she finds herself standing with her arm curled up against her side to shelter it; sometimes she wakes to find herself curled in a ball around it. She hates it for being precious to her, but she guards it like an open wound nonetheless. There's an ache there like a scab that she'll never scrape away. It's _hers._

"Scoot," Stevie says, and she edges into Tony's side to flip on the electric kettle. She takes up all the space in the room, and not only because of her size, although she's big—not much taller than Tony, herself a tall woman, but Cap's broad, with defined arms and the kind of shoulders that can move mountains. She could take apart a man in the time it took most men to blink, and there's a security in standing beside her that Tony has never been able to replicate under other conditions. Maybe it's less that Stevie takes up all the space in a room and more that she takes up all the space in Tony's room. Tony wouldn't know. 

"Anything in particular keeping you up?" Stevie asks. Tony edges a little closer, hopes Stevie won't notice. Resists the urge to put her fingertips on the wing of Stevie's shoulder.

 _Everything._ "Nothing," Tony says. "Just couldn't fall back asleep. Thought I might get a little work in now that I'm up." The mark's right there. Tony's never touched it skin-to-skin, but sometimes after a fight she'll clap Cap on the shoulder, safe in the knowledge that her armor maintains the correct distance, that it shores up all of her weak points.

"You work too hard," Stevie says, but for once she's not being bossy about it. "Remember when you were coding Friday? I don't think you slept for a week."

"I shouldn't have left her alone when she was a kid." It's _right there,_ and she's so tired. Maybe—

"You're always talking about emerging technologies," Stevie counters. "You couldn't have known what it would do to her."

"It was still negligent." Maybe if she touches it, she'll be able to sleep. Be able to put it out of her head. In Tony's world, knowing is always preferable to not knowing.

Stevie rolls her eyes. "I'm not going to try winning this one again," she says, and then she opens the cabinet where they keep the mugs, and that's when Tony loses the battle. She reaches up, like she might reach up if she were trying to steady Stevie's balance, and puts her hand over the mark. 

"Whoa!" Stevie says. She really does lose her balance then, and Tony yanks her hand away from that electric arc of sensation like she's burning.

"Sorry," she says. "I didn't mean—I know it's personal. I mean, it's personal, isn't it?"

"It's fine. Startled me, that's all. Really, Tony, I don't mind. Honey?"

"Yes," Tony answers automatically. "Does it ever—"

"Ever what?"

She needs to stop. "Does it ever bother you that you can't see it?"

"My mark?" Stevie flips the kettle off before it's finished, as impatient as ever, and starts to pour. "Mirrors exist for a reason," she says, wryly. "And no, not really. I like to think she's always right there, just behind my shoulder. Watching my back." She laughs a little. "Guess that's silly."

"No," Tony says. "No, it isn't." She needs to _stop._ "You're sure it's a she?"

"I'm sure." Stevie sets the kettle down, braces her right hand against the countertop, and swivels her hips so she's facing Tony. Tony takes an automatic step back, aware that she's too close. "I can tell," Stevie continues. "You know how your mark—" She catches herself, and says, apologetic and not a little rueful, "Sorry. Guess you wouldn't know. Not like I'll ever meet her, anyway. The odds are against me on that one." Because there are so many people in the world, she doesn't say, and so few of them have soulmates. Because _my_ soulmate never entered her mark in the registry. Because maybe she's dead. Because maybe she doesn't want me. Tony spent the first twenty years of her life with every _because_ possible living inside her head. She knows them all.

"And you don't regret—?"

"Having one? Having her," Stevie corrects herself. "Or maybe not having her, I guess. No, I don't regret it. Look, tea's done." She knocks the back of her knuckles against Tony's ribcage, a casual touch, and Tony, already halfway unzipped, just about crawls out of her skin. "Want to show me what you're working on?"

"Okay," Tony says, and her hands take the mug Stevie offers her. She shouldn't have done that—shouldn't have given in. How does the saying go? Temptation is her only weakness.

At the doorway, Stevie twists around. "Coming?" she asks.

"Yeah. On my way," Tony says, and she follows Cap out of the kitchen. Her position doesn't escape her. She's just behind Stevie's shoulder. Watching, always watching, Stevie's back.


End file.
